


Varius

by kiitos



Category: Horrible Histories
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiitos/pseuds/kiitos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hierocles cannot run fast enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Varius

Hierocles can’t run fast enough, he’s heard from some absolutely bloody wonderful slave whom he is definitely going to shower with riches later, that the emperor had gone to the praetorian camp. He knows it cannot end well and he’s never been more desperate to get to a place in his life, he crashes through market stalls and knocks over passers-by in his hurry to get there because his gut tells him that the emperor is going to need him.

The emperor always needs him, or so he says. Hierocles has a hard time believing it most of the time because he’s just so damn stubborn and so determinedly independent. It’s beautiful and terrifying all at the same time. Just like the emperor himself really.

Hierocles remembers the first time he met the bad, sad and very mad young emperor when he was driving his chariot, he remembers watching him laugh as he terrorised the people of Rome. His eyes didn’t laugh though; they had been sad dark eyes and often still were. Hierocles chooses instead to remember the way Varius looks at him (because to him he can never be anything but chaotic little Varius) when they’re alone. His eyes do smile in those moments.

He remembers jokingly calling the younger man his queen the first time Varius referred to him as his husband, he’d assumed it had been a joke but the way the emperor had lit up was breath-taking and addictive. He still refers to him as his queen in private moments and tries not to look too put out when Varius calls them married in public. Hierocles doesn’t mind really though, because he’ll do anything to make him properly smile.

He can hear cheering coming from the camp and a fleeting part of him hopes that maybe everything will be okay, but he’s not a foolish man despite what some might say. After all his relationship with the most hated man in the empire attracts much in the way of questions and scrutiny from those who know him. No, he’s not a foolish man and he quickens his pace determinedly ignoring the burning in his lungs because it will be nothing compared to the pain his heart will feel if he’s too late.

Too late. He can’t even think about that, no he needs to quickly think of a way to get Varius out of there. Idly he considers throwing him in a chest and smuggling him out like that, there’s always begging and bargaining but somehow he knows that won’t work. Elagabalus isn’t exactly a favourite of the praetorian; one too many stunts and unacceptable public displays have put him irreversibly on their hit list. It hurts to know that their relationship is one of the biggest of those unacceptable public displays.

Elagabalus won’t be the emperor after tonight, but if Hierocles can get there in time, maybe Varius will survive.

When he arrives at the camp, barely avoiding clattering through armour stores, he can hardly breathe, his body struggling to keep up with his determination to find and save his love. He follows the sound of the cheering and shouting and prays to anything and everything that he’s not too late he’s not too late he’s…

Too late.

He must now watch, in some sickening slowed down way as the praetorian surround the emperor and his mother. His mother…why is his mother here? As heartless as it may be he doesn’t care about her, he just needs to get to Varius and help him. He almost smiles despite himself when he realises that the emperor had hidden himself away in a chest, just as he had desperately planned to do. Dare he call out, dare he try and stop what he knows is about to happen?

And then Varius sees him. Their eyes meet and everything stops, just for a moment he can pretend that they’re seeing each other across the courtyard and Varius will beckon him over with a smile and a flourish. He will smile back and bend to pick some stem or other from the gardens so he can present it to his lover, his queen and see him truly light up. He will take that slender body into his arms and in the quiet seclusion of the emperor’s courtyards they will kiss and nothing will ever matter again. The heat of their bodies will be the only they can feel, that and matching heartbeats and something that has to be love because otherwise it wouldn’t be so painful to be torn apart like they are about to be. Hierocles stands helpless and stoic, only moving to touch two fingers to his lips because he needs to say goodbye, needs to show that this is going to kill him. He is going to die along with his lover, of that he has no doubt.

Varius, gods-damned wonderful Varius smiles at him, one of those rare ones that make him light up. Hierocles keeps watching, keeps holding his gaze even as the first sword strikes him and then the link is broken. The pain is monumental, he doesn’t even know how he manages to keep watching, he owes it to him to his emperor to keep loving him even as they break his body. He always sort of knew that all of Elagabalus’ madness and cruelty would be his downfall, he just didn’t know his own little Varius would be the one facing the blades. (Because perhaps it makes him foolish but the man he loves is not the same one who leaves lions in guestrooms.)

He can’t watch as they remove the head, he simply cannot for fear of passing out and he absolutely insists on facing them when they inevitably come for him. And they do. They ask him who he is loyal to and his only answer, the only possible answer is him.

His death comes as a relief, he barely feels anything. He was already dead anyway because he died the second Varius did, the ending of his own life is merely a way to halt the pain of his heart-break. Death however is not enough to quell the eternally over-whelming feeling that he was loyal to his Varius to the end. The perfect citizen. The perfect lover.


End file.
